Imagination, reality flow in opposite directions in the brain

 

---

Electrical and computer engineering Professor Barry Van Veen wears an electrode net used to monitor brain activity via EEG signals. His research could help untangle what happens in the brain during sleep and dreaming.

As real as that daydream may seem, its path through your brain runs opposite reality.

Aiming to discern discrete neural circuits, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have tracked electrical activity in the brains of people who alternately imagined scenes or watched videos.

"A really important problem in brain research is understanding how different parts of the brain are functionally connected. What areas are interacting? What is the direction of communication?" says Barry Van Veen, a UW-Madison professor of electrical and computer engineering. "We know that the brain does not function as a set of independent areas, but as a network of specialized areas that collaborate."

Van Veen, along with Giulio Tononi, a UW-Madison psychiatry professor and neuroscientist, Daniela Dentico, a scientist at UW-Madison's Waisman Center, and collaborators from the University of Liege in Belgium, published results recently in the journal NeuroImage. Their work could lead to the development of new tools to help Tononi untangle what happens in the brain during sleep and dreaming, while Van Veen hopes to apply the study's new methods to understand how the brain uses networks to encode short-term memory.

During imagination, the researchers found an increase in the flow of information from the parietal lobe of the brain to the occipital lobe -- from a higher-order region that combines inputs from several of the senses out to a lower-order region.

In contrast, visual information taken in by the eyes tends to flow from the occipital lobe -- which makes up much of the brain's visual cortex -- "up" to the parietal lobe.

"There seems to be a lot in our brains and animal brains that is directional, that neural signals move in a particular direction, then stop, and start somewhere else," says. "I think this is really a new theme that had not been explored."

The researchers approached the study as an opportunity to test the power of electroencephalography (EEG) -- which uses sensors on the scalp to measure underlying electrical activity -- to discriminate between different parts of the brain's network.

Brains are rarely quiet, though, and EEG tends to record plenty of activity not necessarily related to a particular process researchers want to study.

To zero in on a set of target circuits, the researchers asked their subjects to watch short video clips before trying to replay the action from memory in their heads. Others were asked to imagine traveling on a magic bicycle -- focusing on the details of shapes, colors and textures -- before watching a short video of silent nature scenes.

Using an algorithm Van Veen developed to parse the detailed EEG data, the researchers were able to compile strong evidence of the directional flow of information.

"We were very interested in seeing if our signal-processing methods were sensitive enough to discriminate between these conditions," says Van Veen, whose work is supported by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. "These types of demonstrations are important for gaining confidence in new tools."

Breakthrough in managing yellow fever disease

 

Now a research team led by a biomedical scientist at the University of California, Riverside has determined that the yellow fever virus, a hemorrhagic fever virus, replicates primarily in the liver. Therefore, other organ failures that often follow in people with the disease are due to secondary effects.

When the virus targets the liver, it replicates rapidly causing significant damage to liver cells. In the process, inflammatory cytokines -- proteins secreted by cells especially of the immune system -- are made in massive amounts, which soon gain access to the blood stream. These cytokines are most likely responsible for the damage to distant organs, the research team's findings suggest.

The research team also identified a clinical parameter that could greatly help in managing yellow fever cases.

"Yellow fever causes severe loss of lymphocytes," said Ilhem Messaoudi, an associate professor of biomedical sciences in the UC Riverside School of Medicine, who led the research project. "This process, called lymphopenia, occurs before any measurable changes in liver enzymes can be detected -- that is, about a day or so before we see changes in the liver. It could provide an earlier clinical outcome measure of subsequent disease severity, giving doctors a good prognostic tool for offering more aggressive supportive care for these patients."

Study results appear in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

The research, performed on rhesus macaques (currently, the best model for studying human yellow fever infection) at Oregon National Primate Research Center, is the first study on yellow fever in non-human primates in more than 20 years.

"Yellow fever is truly a neglected tropical disease," Messaoudi said. "Even though it continues to cause fatality, it remains understudied. While it is true there is a highly effective vaccine, it remains extremely challenging to get comprehensive vaccine coverage in sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. Moreover, the vaccine works well if you are between one and 55 years old. It is not safe for babies or the elderly, who could develop yellow fever from the vaccine."

According to Messaoudi, a good understanding of the pathophysiology of yellow fever in a robust animal model gives researchers also a preclinical animal model for testing new inactivated vaccines, which would be much safer for infants and the elderly.

She explained that yellow fever is characterized by two phases. During the acute phase, the patient has fever and myalgia -- not exactly disease-specific symptoms. These symptoms last about 48 hours. While most people are able to resolve them, some enter remission in which the fever disappears for about 24 hours only to be followed by the toxic phase in which viral loads greatly increase. Yellowing of the skin and the whites of the eyes (which is what gives the disease its name) is a consequence of liver failure.

"About 30 percent of unvaccinated people who contract the disease go through the toxic phase, which can be fatal," Messaoudi said.

Because they were interested in identifying which genes in white blood cells were turned on by yellow fever in the animal model, the researchers performed an analysis of gene expression early during the infection -- prior to any clinical symptoms, indeed before any indication that the infected animal was sick. They compared changes in gene expression due to the wild type virus infection to changes induced by vaccination, making theirs the first study to examine changes in gene expression induced by wild type yellow fever infection. They found that by Day 3, yellow fever induced changes in the expression profiles of nearly 800 genes.

"This is a large amount of changes in gene expression," Messaoudi said. "In just 72 hours after infection, half of the genes were up-regulated, or turned on, while the rest were down-regulated. Also, about two-thirds of genes related to some function of the immune system were suppressed by the infection. Those that were up-regulated were highly pro-inflammatory cytokines, which likely cause organ damage."

Messaoudi explained that vaccination of the animals induced expression of 46 genes, most of which were up-regulated and in the pathways of antiviral immunity. In other words, the vaccine was inducing the up-regulation of many genes that were good for making antibodies for protection later on, in contrast to the wild type virus that was inducing changes that were suppressing immunity and causing cell death.

"The question is: Can we use gene expression as a diagnostic in the clinic?" Messaoudi said. "Could we run a quick analysis on patients' white blood cells and determine which infected person is at high or low risk? Supportive care would follow for all patients, but it would change the dynamics of how aggressive the treatment needs to be."

Yellow fever does not infect any species besides primates. Outbreaks in primates have led to outbreaks in humans. The virus is endemic or intermittently epidemic in 45 countries (32 in Africa and 13 in South America). Yellow fever is a very rare cause of illness in U.S. travelers. According to the Center for Disease Control, "there is no specific treatment for yellow fever; care is based on symptoms. Steps to prevent yellow fever virus infection include using insect repellent, wearing protective clothing, and getting vaccinated."

Next, Messaoudi and her colleagues plan to study gene expression for animals that survive infection. They also plan to identify viral proteins responsible for suppressing the immune system, which could lead to antiviral therapies.

Why some people may be immune to HIV-1: Insight

 

---

A study of genetic variation in HIV-1 and in the cells it infects reported by University of Minnesota researchers in this week's issue of PLOS Genetics has uncovered a chink in HIV-1's armor that may, at least in part, explain the puzzling difference -- and potentially open the door to new treatments.

Doctors have long been mystified as to why HIV-1 rapidly sickens some individuals, while in others the virus has difficulties gaining a foothold. Now, a study of genetic variation in HIV-1 and in the cells it infects reported by University of Minnesota researchers in this week's issue of PLOS Genetics has uncovered a chink in HIV-1's armor that may, at least in part, explain the puzzling difference -- and potentially open the door to new treatments.

HIV-1 harms people by invading immune system cells known as T lymphocytes, hijacking their molecular machinery to make more of themselves, then destroying the host cells -- leaving the infected person more susceptible to other deadly diseases. T lymphocytes are not complete sitting ducks, however. Among their anti-virus defense mechanisms is a class of proteins known as APOBEC3s that have the ability to block the HIV-1's ability to replicate. Not surprisingly, however, HIV-1 has a counter-defense mechanism -- a protein called Vif that cons the T lymphocytes into destroying their own APOBEC3.

Suspecting differential susceptibility to HIV-1 might be related to genetic variations in this system, a research team led by doctoral student Eric Refsland and Reuben Harris of the University's College of Biological Sciences and Medical School took a closer look. First, the researchers found that HIV-1 infection boosts the production of one kind of APOBEC3, APOBEC3H -- suggesting it's a key player in fighting back. Then, using an experimental technique known as separation of function mutagenesis, they discovered that different people have different strengths/potencies of APOBEC3H, with some proteins expressed stably and others inherently unstable. The stable variations, the researchers found, were able to successfully limit HIV-1's ability to replicate if the infecting virus had a weak version of Vif -- but not for HIV-1 viruses that had strong Vif.

"This work shows that the competition between the virus and the host is still ongoing," Refsland says. "The virus hasn't completely perfected its ability to replicate in humans."

Armed with this clearer picture of the multifaceted interactions between Vif and APOBEC3, Harris says, the next step is to figure out how to stop Vif from disabling the APOBEC3 enzymes. "One could imagine drugs that stop Vif from binding with APOBEC," he said. "This is a bonafide HIV killing pathway, and we just have to devise clever ways to activate it in infected persons. Such an approach could indefinitely suppress virus replication, and even result in curing it."

---

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Minnesota. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

---

Journal Reference:

1. Eric W. Refsland, Judd F. Hultquist, Elizabeth M. Luengas, Terumasa Ikeda, Nadine M. Shaban, Emily K. Law, William L. Brown, Cavan Reilly, Michael Emerman, Reuben S. Harris. Natural Polymorphisms in Human APOBEC3H and HIV-1 Vif Combine in Primary T Lymphocytes to Affect Viral G-to-A Mutation Levels and Infectivity. PLoS Genetics, 2014; 10 (11): e1004761 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1004761

---

 

Peristaltic Pumps : How do they work?

 

 

Peristaltic pump in motion

 

A peristaltic pump is a type of positive displacement pump used for pumping a variety of fluids. The fluid is contained within a flexible tube fitted inside a circular pump casing (though linear peristaltic pumps have been made). A rotor with a number of "rollers", "shoes", "wipers", or "lobes" attached to the external circumference of the rotor compresses the flexible tube. As the rotor turns, the part of the tube under compression is pinched closed (or "occludes") thus forcing the fluid to be pumped to move through the tube. Additionally, as the tube opens to its natural state after the passing of the cam ("restitution" or "resilience") fluid flow is induced to the pump. This process is called peristalsis and is used in many biological systems such as the gastrointestinal tract. Typically, there will be two or more rollers, or wipers, occluding the tube, trapping between them a body of fluid. The body of fluid is then transported, at ambient pressure, toward the pump outlet. Peristaltic pumps may run continuously, or they may be indexed through partial revolutions to deliver smaller amounts of fluid.

Applications

Peristaltic pumps are typically used to pump clean/sterile or aggressive fluids because cross contamination with exposed pump components cannot occur. Some common applications include pumping IV fluids through an infusion device, aggressive chemicals, high solids slurries and other materials where isolation of the product from the environment, and the environment from the product, are critical. It is also used in heart-lung machines to circulate blood during a bypass surgery as the pump does not cause significant hemolysis.

Peristaltic pumps are also used in a wide variety of industrial applications. Their unique design makes them especially suited to pumping abrasives and viscous fluids.

source  : Wikipedia

11-country survey of older adults.

 

November 20, 2014

Health Affairs

A survey of older adults in eleven countries found that older adult people living in the States were sicker than their counterparts abroad, with 68 percent living with two or more chronic conditions and 53 percent taking four or more medications. More US older people, 19 percent, reported cost-related care expenses than residents in other countries -- whereas 83 percent of US respondents had treatment plans they could carry out in their daily lives, one of the highest rates across the surveyed countries.

---

A new survey was released November 19 as a Web First by Health Affairs, called "International Survey Of Older Adults Finds Shortcomings In Access, Coordination, And Patient-Centered Care" by Robin Osborn, Donald Moulds, David Squires, Michelle M. Doty, and Chloe Anderson All authors are affiliated with The Commonwealth Fund in New York.

This study was supported by The Commonwealth Fund and also will appear in the December issue of Health Affairs.

The study surveyed 15,617 adults ages sixty-five and older in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

Some other key findings:

- Only 57 percent of the US older adult people respondents could get same-day or next-day medical appointments when sick. This was lower than many countries (83 percent in France and New Zealand and 81 percent in Germany) but higher than Canada (45 percent).

- Regarding getting specialty care appointments, the reverse was found: Eighty-six percent of Americans reported waiting less than four weeks, better than any other country except Switzerland (82 percent).

- In the area of care coordination, the US older adult people were the most likely (23 percent) to report that test results or records were not available at doctors' appointments or duplicate tests had been ordered. However, in assessing post-hospitalization care, the US people were among the least likely (28 percent) to have experienced gaps in discharge planning.

This is the seventeenth in a series of international survey analyses from this group of authors. However, past surveys have assessed the health and health care of general populations, where, according to the authors, "the United States has been the outlier...for its high numbers of uninsured people and the absence of national standards for essential benefits or financial protection." This survey of an older population, with near-universal coverage of Americans by Medicare or some other health insurance, allowed the authors "to compare more directly the performance of the US health care delivery system with...other industrialized nations."

---

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Health Affairs. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

---

Journal Reference:

1. R. Osborn, D. Moulds, D. Squires, M. M. Doty, C. Anderson. International Survey Of Older Adults Finds Shortcomings In Access, Coordination, And Patient-Centered Care. Health Affairs, 2014; DOI: 10.1377/hlthaff.2014.0947

New device reduces scarring in damaged blood vessels

 

November 20, 2014

Northwestern University

A new device contains a form of vitamin A that controls inflammatory responses, preventing scar tissue formation and promoting wound healing. The soft, porous, and thin elastic material contains an acid form of vitamin A, called a retinoid, which is produced by the body to help cells develop and stay healthy. Synthetic retinoids have been formulated and traditionally used to treat acne and some types of cancer.

---

When blood vessels are damaged through surgery, it can trigger an endless cycle of scarring and repair.

"Scar tissue will always form inside the blood vessel and, in many cases, eventually block blood flow," said Guillermo Ameer, professor of biomedical engineering at Northwestern University's McCormick School of Engineering. "Then surgeons have to go back in, eliminate the obstruction, or put in a new graft or stent to restore blood flow. In the case of a prosthetic vascular graft used for bypass surgery, it will scar again and ultimately fail."

Ameer, who is also professor of surgery at the Feinberg School of Medicine, has developed a new material that, when applied to damaged blood vessels, can prevent scarring and stop the cycle before it begins.

The soft, porous, and thin elastic material contains an acid form of vitamin A, called a retinoid, which is produced by the body to help cells develop and stay healthy. Synthetic retinoids have been formulated and traditionally used to treat acne and some types of cancer. Unfortunately, the oral dose needed to positively affect vessel healing and prevent scarring could never be administered to humans as it is toxic in very high doses.

"We solved this problem by using engineering and biomaterial science concepts," Ameer said. "We incorporated the retinoid into a biodegradable membrane that can be handled and implanted by a surgeon. That way, we can target the blood vessel and safely get the effect we want."

The research is described in the paper "Periadventitial atRA citrate-based polyester membranes reduce neointimal hyperplasia and restenosis after carotid injury in rats," which was published in the September 19 issue of the American Journal of Physiology: Heart and Circulatory Physiology. Elaine Gregory, research associate in surgery, and Antonio Webb, a former postdoctoral researcher in Ameer's lab and current professor at the University of Florida, were the paper's first authors.

Ameer started with an inherently antioxidant, citrate-based polymer previously developed in his laboratory. Then he added the all-trans retinoic acid (atRA), a vitamin A derivative. Ameer's longtime collaborator and co-senior author of the paper, Melina Kibbe, the Edward G. Elcock Professor of Surgical Research at Feinberg, evaluated the membrane in an animal model. When wrapped around the outside of a damaged blood vessel, it created a favorable environment for the healing process. Ameer and Kibbe noted a 50-60 percent reduction of scar formation compared to vessels without the membrane.

"We're putting something on the outside of the vessel that affects what happens inside the vessel," Ameer said. "It seems counterintuitive, but scarring also involves cells that are normally present on the outside layer of the blood vessel."

Damaged cells typically produce aggressive signals that cause their neighboring cells to become inflamed. Ameer said the material "keeps the cells quiet," so dangerous messages do not spread to the rest of the vessel. The membrane achieves local exposure to atRA, protecting the blood vessel and regulating how it responds to injury.

"Whether or not you employ a stent or attach a prosthetic graft to a blood vessel, you injure it," Ameer said. "The vessel's response to the injury can get out of control. With this fairly simple method, we are trying to control the inflammatory response and maintain adequate blood flow through the vessel."

 

 

Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Northwestern University. The original article was written by Amanda Morris. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.

---

Journal Reference:

1. E. K. Gregory, A. R. Webb, J. M. Vercammen, M. E. Flynn, G. A. Ameer, M. R. Kibbe. Periadventitial atRA citrate-based polyester membranes reduce neointimal hyperplasia and restenosis after carotid injury in rats. AJP: Heart and Circulatory Physiology, 2014; 307 (10): H1419 DOI: 10.1152/ajpheart.00914.2013

---

Cite This Page:

• MLA
• APA
• Chicago

Northwestern University. "New device reduces scarring in damaged blood vessels." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 20 November 2014. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/11/141120141804.htm>.

Everything You Need to Know about the U.S.–China Climate Change Agreement

 

A turning point has been reached in the world's bid to curb global warming

November 12, 2014 By David Biello

HISTORIC AGREEMENT: President Obama's visit to Beijing has yielded a pact to cut greenhouse gas pollution from the world's two biggest emitting nations. Official White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy

The presidents of the world's two most polluting nations agree: something should be done about climate change. And they're just the leaders to do it, per the terms of what President Barack Obama called a "historic agreement" announced November 12 between the U.S. and China. Although neither country has plans to stop burning coal or oil in the near future, both countries now have commitments to reduce the greenhouse gases that result.
"As the world's two largest economies, energy consumers and emitters of greenhouse gases, we have a special responsibility to lead the global effort against climate change," said Obama in a joint press conference with President Xi Jinping, wrapping up a visit to Beijing that included the joint effort on climate change.
The U.S. will double the speed of its current pollution reduction trajectory, which has seen carbon dioxide emissions fall roughly 10 percent below 2005 levels to date. The country will now aim to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. That's in addition to the 17 percent reduction below 2005 levels due by 2020 and shows the kind of five-year planning the U.S. would like to see adopted in international plans to combat climate change. In other words, ever-increasing ambition in reduction targets delivered every five years. "This is an ambitious goal, but it is an achievable goal," Obama said. "It puts us on a path to achieving the deep emissions reductions by advanced economies that the scientific community says is necessary to prevent the most catastrophic effects of climate change."
Although Chinese leaders are quite fond of five-year plans, their new climate version would not begin until "around 2030," under the terms of the new agreement. That is when the country's CO2 pollution will peak, advancing the Chinese war on pollution onto the invisible front. The nation will also "strive" to reach that peak even sooner. Just as Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli pledged at the United Nations in September "to peak total CO2 pollution as soon as possible," now Xi has followed through in November with the first agreed-on date to cap its global warming pollution by 2030.
The problem is coal, which currently provides more than 70 percent of the energy the fast-developing nation uses. Hundreds of new coal-burning power plants account for how China surpassed the U.S. in the past decade as the world's largest emitter of greenhouse gases. But already several Chinese cities and provinces are experimenting with the kind of capitalist solutions favored by U.S. free marketeers—cap-and-trade programs that in some cases even extend to cover public transportation and buildings themselves. These programs are pilots and may be scaled up for a national program expected in coming years or scrapped in favor of some new national plan or carbon tax. "China has plans for a national market and one that is the most ambitious in the world," says Barbara Finamore, Asia director at the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council and longtime Beijing resident. "It would dwarf any other carbon market in the world."
More importantly perhaps, the Chinese central government has begun to talk about a cap on coal-burning itself. Statistics show that this year coal use in China slowed for the first time this century, dropping by around 1 percent, according to Greenpeace International. The hopeful sign suggests that peak coal use could come within the next decade or so, although this dip could also be a result of slowing economic growth rather than proactive efforts to slow climate change. But peak coal use is exactly what the Chinese have agreed to ensure now, along with cuts in CO2 intensity by 2020. Already China's National Development and Reform Commission has laid out a plan to cope with climate change through the end of the decade.
That means building even more nuclear power plants, wind farms, hydroelectric dams and even to start employing more solar power, of which the country installed 12 gigawatts-worth in 2013. In fact, in 2013 more new clean energy sources were added to the grid in China than fossil fuel-fired power—for the first time ever. China has added several hundred gigawatts-worth of such clean energy—the Three Gorges Dam alone pumps out 22 gigawatts— but hopes to add as much as 1,000 gigawatts of these low-carbon emitting sources by 2030. That would constitute 20 percent of its energy—and roughly the total amount of all electricity produced in the U.S. or all the coal-fired power plants China has built in the last few decades. It's also double what the Chinese have committed to achieve by 2015 in their current Five-Year Plan.
China is already the world leader in new nuclear and new renewable energy sources, and the energy intensity of its economy dropped by more than 19 percent between 2006 and 2010. But this week’s commitment will require an acceleration in these already fast-paced transition efforts.
At the same time, the U.S. and China will continue to collaborate on developing the kind of CO2 capture and storage (CCS) that could help clean coal-burning for power plants but also industry, such as steel and cement-making. That change will come through increased funding to the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center—one of the fruits of the last deal between the two countries in 2009—and at least one "large-scale pilot project." This project will not rely on flushing more oil out of the ground with the CO2 to be buried, as U.S. CCS projects have done, but rather serve as a bid to help solve China's water crisis by using CO2 to produce fresh water from an underground saltwater aquifer. The project is expected to "inject one million tons of CO2 and create approximately 1.4 million cubic meters of freshwater per year," a major technological advance if achieved.
Trade will also play a role: The tariff agreement signed this week by the two countries may also extend to green goods in the future, such as more energy-efficient and resilient building materials. After all, how China builds out its cities in the next few decades will lock in either highly polluting energy for decades—or not.
Already, conventional air pollution like smog is driving change in China, including the mandated shutdown of factories and driving restrictions around Beijing in recent days in a bid to clear the air for world leaders. "Air pollution has become one of the most important issues facing China today, both for social stability and also international reputation," Finamore notes. "They are beginning to decouple coal use and economic growth."
Cleaner air could also come in the form of converting coal to gas or liquids at giant chemical plants before burning it, which would help reduce smog but exacerbate CO2 pollution. Or it could come in the form of CCS, nuclear and renewables. "There is real potential for shifting of coal use in China from most polluted regions inland, which is why a national cap on coal consumption that's mandatory is so important," Finamore says, adding that it's a "real possibility."
The agreement between the two countries that together emit more than 40 percent of global CO2 pollution suggests a strong deal will be signed by the world's nations in Paris in 2015, under the terms of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, unlike Copenhagen in 2009. Prior to that meeting China and the U.S. pledged to cooperate but made no firm commitments to reduce pollution, resulting in the last-minute hullabaloo to salvage international efforts known as the Copenhagen Accord.
This weeks’ agreement does not mean, however, that the problem of climate change is solved. The U.S. and China are still on pace to add billions of metric tons of CO2 pollution each year into the atmosphere. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that the world has already put into the atmosphere about half the carbon it can to avoid more than 2 degrees Celsius of global warming, and time is running out. Already, global average temperatures are up nearly 1 degree C and atmospheric concentrations of CO2 have touched 400 parts-per-million for the first time since Homo sapiens sapiens walked on Earth.
The 28 nations of the European Union have pledged to cut greenhouse gas pollution by 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, which means, including this new agreement, the countries responsible for more than half of the world's emissions now have plans to cut it. But other major polluters such as Australia, Canada and Japan have all fallen back in their efforts to curb global warming pollution. Australia's pollution jumped after it repealed its carbon tax this year; Canada has repudiated its prior commitment to reduce pollution under the current international global warming agreement; and Japan's pollution has swelled as it burns more natural gas and coal to produce electricity to replace that generated by the nuclear reactors shuttered in the wake of the accident at Fukushima Daiichi. There is no guarantee that the U.S. or China might not also see similar setbacks on the road to less CO2, particularly given the climate denial politics that are rampant in the U.S. Congress and China's imperative to deliver continued economic growth or its history of gaming international carbon markets.
And a new major polluter—India—has arrived on the scene. In hoping to repeat China's development success it will burn more and more coal. Just as China has accounted for the bulk of rapidly rising climate-changing pollution in the first decades of the 21st century, India could soon take over driving that growth. But there is hope in the form of cleaner energy sources. New Prime Minister Narendra Modi is "very engaged on renewables and solar power to electrify and provide energy access in India to hundreds of millions who don't have it," says Jennifer Morgan, global director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute, an environmental group.
Plus, the new agreement is nowhere near ambitious enough to meet the reduction targets laid out in the most recent report of the IPCC. No country or league of countries—not even the E.U.—is on track to reduce pollution enough. Policy modeler Chris Hope of the University of Cambridge fed the new commitments plus the E.U. effort into a computer model under the assumption that other countries would continue to allow pollution to grow. He came out with "less than a 1 percent chance of keeping the rise in global mean temperatures below the iconic 2 [degree C] level in 2100. Most likely the rise will be about 3.8 [degrees C]." In other words, more needs to be done and China's level of striving to reach peak pollution before 2030 will prove crucial.
The world still has a long way to go to combat climate change and even this new inadequate agreement will require some tough, perhaps impossible, efforts from the U.S. and China. "We're nowhere near the world we need to be in to achieve our most ambitious climate goals," says Valerie Karplus, director of the Tsinghua-M.I.T. China Energy and Climate Project. "We need to recognize that reality and think where do we go from here."
But just as John Kerry did when he was the lone U.S. senator to hold a press conference back in Copenhagen in 2009 stressing the importance of this issue, as Secretary of State in 2013 and 2014 has pressed the issue of combating climate change with his Chinese counterparts. As a result, the U.S. and China have now begun to show that it just might be possible for the nations of the world to stop global warming for the first time since the Kyoto Protocol was signed in the 1990s. As Obama also said in his joint press conference with Xi: "When we work together, it's good for the United States, it's good for China and it is good for the world."

 

Smartphone Screens Correct for Your Vision Flaws

 

Self-correcting screens on smartphones and iPads tailor themselves to a viewer's vision—no glasses necessary

Nov 18, 2014 By Rachel Nuwer

Ben Voldman

In the U.S., more than 40 percent of 40-year-olds need eyeglasses for reading, and that figure jumps to nearly 70 percent for people aged 80 and older. “As we get older, refractive errors play more significant roles in our lives,” says Gordon Wetzstein, an assistant professor of electrical engineering at Stanford University.

But glasses and contact lenses are not always ideal. If you are farsighted, for example, you do not need glasses to see traffic while driving, but you do need them to read your speedometer or GPS. The best solution in such cases, Wetzstein says, would be vision-correcting displays—screens that wear the glasses for you.

Wetzstein and his colleagues at M.I.T. (where he was formerly based) and the University of California, Berkeley, have developed just such a screen. The vision-correcting display makes two modifications to a standard high-resolution smartphone or tablet screen. The first is a low-cost, pinhole-covered printed transparency that covers the screen. The second: algorithms coded into the smartphone or tablet that determine the viewer's position relative to the screen and distort the image that is projected, according to his or her prescription. As the distorted image passes through the matrix of pinholes in the transparent screen cover, the hardware-software combination creates errors on the screen that cancel errors in the eye, thus delivering what appears to be a crisp image. The screen can correct for myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism and more complicated vision problems. The team presented the work at the SIGGRAPH conference in August in Vancouver.

Informal tests on a handful of users have shown that the technology works, Wetzstein says, but large-scale studies are needed to further refine it. In the process, the researchers also plan on developing a slider that can be used to manually adjust the focus of the screen. Wetzstein says that the technology could be a boon for people in developing countries who have easier access to mobile devices than prescription eyewear.

Acid Maps Reveal Worst of Climate Change

 

By David Biello | November 20, 2014

---

Much of the change in climate change is happening to the ocean. It’s not just the extra heat hiding within the waves. The seven seas also absorb a big share of the carbon dioxide released by burning the fossilized sunshine known as coal, natural gas and oil. All those billions and billions of CO2 molecules interact with the brine to make it ever so slightly more acidic over time and, as more and more CO2 gets absorbed, the oceans become more acidic.

Now scientists have delivered the most comprehensive maps of this acid phenomena, a global picture of the oceans in 2005 against which future scientists can track just how much more acidic the oceans have become.

Courtesy of Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory

The maps are an attempt to bring to visual life a problem that is just as invisible as the excess CO2 piling up in the atmosphere for the past couple of centuries. People cannot see, taste or feel the subtle shift in the seawater and it has taken years of measurement around the world to gather enough data for this new global picture. Calls for such measurements had been made since at least 1956. Charles David Keeling heeded the call back then, producing the Keeling Curve, which tracks rising CO2 levels to this day. But a similar set of measurements for the oceans has been lacking—until now.

Geochemist Taro Takahashi of Columbia University has spent four decades measuring these changes, which amount to a generally basic ocean growing 30 percent more acidic—a change in pH from 8.2 to 8.1. That’s the result of absorbing roughly 25 percent of annual CO2 pollution, which now amounts to 36 billion metric tons in total.

In other words, the oceans currently take in roughly 9 billion metric tons of CO2 each year—a number that is growing. Cumulatively the oceans have absorbed at least 150 billion metric tons of CO2. Despite the size of the increase, it is still just one part in 1,000 of the CO2 already in the ocean.

The new maps highlight the fact that the world ocean is not uniform. The vast belts of seawater that lie in the tropics and temperate zones vary the least in pH while Arctic and Antarctic waters seesaw as plankton blooms, sucking CO2 out of the water, before the cold waters of winter again absorb yet more CO2 and become more acidic. In fact, in the northern winter the Bering Sea becomes the most acidic ocean on Earth, reaching a pH of as low as 7.7. That won’t remain an anomalously low number for long, however, as that is the pH the entire ocean may experience if present trends continue through 2100.

Another anomaly is the Indian Ocean, which is about 10 percent more acidic than the Atlantic or Pacific. The exact reason why is a scientific mystery but perhaps it is because it is the most isolated sea, dominated by monsoon rains and river drainage rather than ocean currents mixing the waters, Takahashi suggests.

Globally, if current trends continue, then corals and other shell-building microscopic sea animals and plants may find it harder to build and sustain their shells. Already, the shells of foraminifera (microscopic amoeba-like animals) are shrinking as a result of more acidic waters in the Southern Ocean around Antarctica. And shell-building life in Arctic oceans may become chemically impossible, forcing shell-building sea snails and sea slugs that thrive there now to migrate to warmer waters, if that’s even possible.

Fossil fuel burning is now making oceans more acidic at a rate unseen in at least 300 million years so it will be important to continue to follow up on these measurements. Perhaps there can soon be a “Takahashi Map” to complement the Keeling Curve. Because as marine chemist Scott Doney of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution wrote in Scientific American in March 2006: “Although the effects may be hidden from people’s view, dramatic alterations in the marine environment appear to be inevitable.”

7 Solutions to Climate Change Happening Now

 

Even as the world continues to spew more carbon pollution, change has begun—and is accelerating

November 17, 2014 - By David Biello

Clean Energy Boom: Big dams and little solar panels like these in China are helping produce electricity with less greenhouse pollution, one of several solutions to climate change advancing around the world.

A man who once flew all the way to Copenhagen from Washington, D.C., just to tell journalists that climate change wasn't that big a deal is likely now to return to lead (or at least strongly influence) the environment committee of the U.S. Senate. As Sen. James Inhofe (R–Okla.) said at that time, in December 2009, he came to Copenhagen to "make sure that nobody is laboring under the misconception that the U.S. Senate is going to do something" about climate change. His thinking likely will not change by 2015; in fact, Inhofe has already decried the new U.S.–China climate agreement as a "nonbinding charade."
Even though the U.S. is responsible for the largest share of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the country will not be able to take national legislative action on climate change anytime soon. Despite a president who avers that "those who are already feeling the effects of climate change don't have time to deny it —they're busy dealing with it," the U.S. Congress seems content to let climate change languish as a priority. National climate action is already devolving into a fight over approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline that would enable more oil to flow from Canada's tar sands and implementation of the Clean Power Plan, known to some as the “war on coal.” In fact, the likely new Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) was reelected in part based on a platform reduced to a bumper sticker: "Coal. Guns. Freedom."
As a result of similar complacency or intransigence around the globe, greenhouse gas pollution continues to rise and atmospheric concentrations have now touched 400 parts per million. Australia elected a climate skeptic as prime minister who promptly repealed its carbon tax—and pollution has promptly soared this year. In fact, the world has dawdled long enough that the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change now suggests that technologies to remove CO2 from the atmosphere will be required to prevent too much global warming this century.
But, believe it or not, action on climate change is taking place in the U.S. “We don't have time for a meeting of the Flat Earth Society," Pres. Barack Obama noted back in June 2013. So his administration has moved forward without Congress as a result, through the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Power Plan and the new agreement to reduce pollution with China.
Here are seven solutions to global warming that are advancing and gathering steam in the U.S.—and around the world.
1. Clean Power Plants—More than 20 percent of new, large power plants built in the U.S. in 2013 employ sunlight to generate electricity. And that does not include solar panels on people's rooftops, which alone added nearly two gigawatts of capacity last year. In addition, natural gas replaced coal as the largest source of new electricity generation. The shale revolution enabled the U.S. to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions “while maintaining economic growth by switching from coal to gas," notes Nobuo Tanaka, former head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) and a now a visiting fellow at Columbia University.
Of the two coal-fired power plants that were completed last year, one was the coal gasification facility in Edwardsport, Ind., which could one day incorporate technology to capture its CO2 emissions. Per megawatt-hour, the new power plant also spews half the CO2 as the old coal-fired power plant it replaced.
Although the U.S. is currently retiring more nuclear reactors than it is building, the same is not true in China. In addition to its 22 operating reactors, it has 26 under construction and plans for even more. That's because the Chinese leadership sees nuclear power as one of the key ways—besides solar, wind and hydropower—to cut down on the country's coal burning, which is responsible both for its choking air pollution and swelling greenhouse gas emissions.
Without nuclear power the IEA and other energy experts suggest that curtailing climate change may prove impossible. Regardless, nuclear power today, along with hydropower, provides the bulk of low-CO2 electricity production. "We need everything," Tanaka says. "We need CCS [carbon capture and storage]. We need nuclear. We need renewables."
2. Local Action—In 2008 six states in the northeastern U.S. launched a regional effort to cap CO2 pollution from power plants in the region via the use of alternative sources and energy-efficiency programs. By 2014, the effort had grown to include nine states and had helped cut such greenhouse gas emissions in nearly half. In fact, the program has been so successful that the states agreed to lower the overall cap by an additional 45 percent starting this year.
The Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, aka RGGI, or "Reggie" for short, is not the only climate action in the U.S. in the absence of a federal effort. California has launched its own cap-and-trade market, and it has, along with 34 other states, some form of mandate for electricity generated from less polluting sources, such as the wind, sun and Earth's geothermal heat. Cities large (New York) and small (Dubuque, Iowa) have set targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In fact, cities around the world are reducing CO2 in a bid for self-preservation, and some, such as Copenhagen and Melbourne, are aiming to cancel out any CO2 emitted with CO2 absorbed or otherwise avoided.
As a result of these actions—and the surge in generation from cleaner power sources—U.S. greenhouse gas pollution has dropped by 10 percent since 2005. And the recent election holds out the prospect that RGGI may gain another member state—Pennsylvania.
3. Control of Methane Leaks—Colorado has become the first state in the nation to try to address methane—a greenhouse gas even more potent than CO2. Leaks in pipelines, storage tanks and other infrastructure will have to be fixed within weeks after their discovery, among other new regulations administered by the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission. The Rocky Mountain state is unlikely to remain the only place to act to control such pollution.
In this case even the federal government is taking action. The Obama administration has implemented new rules to capture the methane leaking from garbage dumps, coal mines and the manure piles created by large animal farms. And both the EPA and U.S. Bureau of Land Management are considering rules around methane for the oil and gas industry. At the local level Google has partnered with environmental groups and cities to sniff out leaks in aging gas infrastructure.
Methane currently accounts for 9 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas pollution—and growing because of fracking for oil and the gas itself. In fact, that number does not include all the methane that is flared—that is, burned off as a precaution to prevent explosions but in the process releasing CO2. So action against methane can buy more time to address the problem of rising CO2 pollution.
4. Tougher Emissions and Efficiency Standards—New standards for cars are becoming a global phenomenon, whether it’s more stringent rules in China, the European Union or the U.S. As the world heads toward two billion vehicles, making sure that these cars emit less pollution—both smog-forming nitrogen oxides and heat-trapping carbon dioxide—will be crucial, whether it is accomplished via more efficient internal combustion engines or better hybrids. Electric cars, including the Chevy Volt, Nissan LEAF or Tesla Model S, can help, too, provided the electricity does not come from burning fossil fuels.
At the same time, power plants face ever-tighter requirements for air pollution. As a result, U.S. pollution is already 10 percent below 2005 levels and will drop lower. "You can't build a coal plant in the U.S. unless it complies with high emission reductions," says Ethan Zindler, head of policy analysis at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. "People do the low-cost option for compliance, which is to build a new gas plant." One day even natural gas–fired power plants may have to employ CO2 capture and storage, much like new coal-fired power plants in Mississippi and Texas do today.
And new efficiency standards for appliances, from air conditioners to washing machines, have helped keep electricity demand from growing, paired with improvements in basic technology, such as light-emitting diodes, or LEDs, replacing less efficient incandescent bulbs.
5. Greener Farming—The U.S. Department of Agriculture is helping farmers adapt to climate change, even if they don't believe in global warming. Regional climate hubs now provide extension agents with technical support on best practices to deal with a changing climate, including preserving buffer wetlands to cut down on both erosion and flooding. National forests and grasslands will now be managed with the goal of storing CO2, among other aims. Already farmers have begun adopting various techniques to reduce greenhouse emissions, including precision agriculture to grow crops efficiently, cover crops to reduce soil erosion and biodigesters to reduce animal waste.
Ultimately, farms may even help address climate change by providing energy crops for biofuels. Such fuel from plants paired with the kind of CCS used on coal-fired power plants could even begin to draw down the amount of CO2 already in the atmosphere. And the regrowth of U.S. forests as less land is devoted to farming is already helping restrain global warming.
6. Private Sector Action—It's not just that tech giants like Apple and Google are powering data centers with wind and solar. It's not just big food brands like General Mills and PepsiCo preparing their businesses for the crop and water scarcity predicted by climate change. It's not even the internal carbon prices employed at oil companies like Shell and even ExxonMobil. It's the fact that—outside of coal companies, a few coal-burning utilities and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce—it's hard to find businesses that do not accept the science on global warming or have plans to deal with it.
The simple fact is that climate change also means changes to business models, whether the company is an insurance giant like Swiss Re facing extreme weather risk or a utility, like NRG Energy, facing new regulations as well as customers desirous of a new relationship with power production and producers. And for those in the energy business like Alstom, General Electric, Siemens, Toshiba or Westinghouse, fortunes will be made—or lost—as China and other fast-developing countries build out cleaner energy options.
7. New Kinds of Geopolitical Consensus—On November 12 China and the U.S., the world's two most polluting countries, signed an agreement to combat climate change. China will cap its CO2 emissions by 2030 and plan to get 20 percent of its electricity from the wind, sun, dams and fission. The U.S. will ratchet up its pollution reduction trajectory aiming for a doubling of the annual rate of decline from just over 1 percent per year to more than 2 percent per year. Combined with the pledge of 28 countries of the European Union to reduce CO2 as well in the same time frame, more than half of global pollution is now set to decline in coming decades. "The politics in both countries are easier if both countries move forward together," notes Jennifer Morgan, global director of the climate program at the World Resources Institute (WRI). "If both are acting together, others cannot hide behind them and they can inspire greater ambition."
Nor is the U.S.–China deal the only bright spot, internationally. Brazil and Indonesia—the two countries where deforestation is fastest—are both attempting to reverse course.
At the same time, developing countries are aiming to skip fossil fuels in their drive for prosperity. Kenya has become the world's hotspot for geothermal power, thanks to the Rift Valley, where geology brings hot rocks close to the surface. Both Brazil and India have made big pushes for more solar power. And a recent survey by Bloomberg New Energy Finance found that 55 developing countries installed nearly twice as much renewable power as developed countries between 2008 and 2013. "If you're burning diesel to light your home, that isn't great," says Bloomberg's Zindler. "You can now displace that with PV," or photovoltaics, thanks to the price drop in these cleaner technologies in recent years.
That's one thing individuals can do: join the growing ranks of solar homeowners. But, at least in the U.S., there is another action that is probably more important to the fight against climate change in the long run: voting for politicians and policies that promise climate action. As WRI's Morgan notes, to keep the global average temperature from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius by 2100, “the pace and scale of change just needs to increase dramatically."